Latest / Centrally Speaking / Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the University

Transcript

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the University · Centrally Speaking

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the Central Schweinfeller Church's podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: Today we're talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion and the university, DEI and the university.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: And we're fortunate to be able to have Dr.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: Patrick Casey with us today.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Dr.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Casey is the assistant professor of philosophy at Holy Family University in Philadelphia.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: He has wide-ranging interests and has published in areas such as philosophy of religion, political philosophy, history of philosophy, and philosophical hermeneutics.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, the theory of interpretation.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Patrick, it's very good to uh have you back on the show.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for uh coming and answering some questions with us uh about DEI.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's my pleasure.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: How about uh as we start uh today's program, we uh try and define DEI in a concise uh manner.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: So, in two sentences, do you think you can define diversity, equity, inclusion?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then afterwards, maybe you could share with us uh why some think that it's beneficial.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: In some contexts, I guess our listeners should know that sometimes uh justice or belonging are added to the to the acronyms.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh belonging in particular is becoming uh more uh more frequent as an addition.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so in universities, DEI offices or committees can be thought as of as having two goals.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, on the one hand, that they aim at increasing access to university resources for people who have historically been excluded or unwelcome, and they try to promote a feeling of belonging or inclusion for those people.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And on the other hand, they try to promote social justice in the university and also in the broader community.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: And as far as it being beneficial uh to people, uh how how is this idea, this philosophy of uh DEI uh beneficial?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so as I just stated, I the the goals of the DI DEI universities, I think they're laudable.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that they're at least consonant, if not in harmony with Christian doctrine.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm at a Roman Catholic university, and social justice has been integral to the Roman Catholic faith since at least the 1960s.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it's certainly been true that in the US, not all people have been welcomed to universities.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, historically, women, black Americans, Jews uh were often excluded from higher education.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, obviously that was that was wrong.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's been important to change the policies and behaviors uh that were associated with that type of uh exclusion and to welcome anybody who has talent and interest uh to university life.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I think that those are all uh uh wonderful goals uh that the DEI has.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've also worked, I've had the pleasure of working with a number of people in the DEI uh sphere.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And my general impression of them is that they're sincerely, they sincerely desire good things for the faculty, students, and staff and the broader community.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I think sometimes people have a negative view of people who are in uh the DEI world and they think of them as just kind of ladder climbers or just um trying to engage in self-aggrandizement, something like that.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to benefit themselves.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that really hasn't been in my experience.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: At least it's certainly not any more true of the DEI sphere than it is of any other sphere of human life.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so my impression of people in the DEI world is that they actually do want to feel sincerely want to feel people, want to make people feel uh welcome and included uh and successful uh and in the university.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of those being the overarching goals of DEI, I think that they are indeed audible goals.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: When did DEI become a mode of thinking and how pervasive is it on our university campuses?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then for that matter, how is it how long has it been influencing our society and universities?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really good question.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: So a number of people have been writing on this, and I'm not an expert in the history by any means, but I have been reading their work, and so I can pass along uh at least kind of the broad brush strokes of history here that I've that I've gathered.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: There was a good piece uh recently published uh in the Washington Post about the history of DEI in the last year or so.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's one of the pieces that I'll be drawing from.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a good way of thinking about this, at least um on the side of advocates of DEI, the way that they think about themselves is they think about themselves as working in the lineage of the civil rights movement.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how they will understand their own kind of genealogy.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so they'll say, you know, we have the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and then we had Title IX, uh, which focuses more on uh gender and sexuality, introduced in 1965.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so these moves at the federal level, um, universities had to start hiring administrators to ensure federal compliance.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and through the 60s, you have affirmative action growing in the universities.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: A pivotal moment, though, was in uh 1978.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's a famous court case called Regents of the University of California versus Baki, um colloquially known as the Bakke case, where the Supreme Court ruled that uh universities cannot use quotas uh but can factor race into admissions, admissions decisions to promote campus diversity.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And there I'm just quoting the Washington Post piece on this.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So since then you have universities effectively practicing affirmative action, but under the guise of promoting diversity, specifically as an educational goal and not for the benefits, the benefit of the students themselves.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that's when diversity becomes, you know, a big uh a big movement inside of universities.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: But again, the goal is focusing that there's an educational benefit and cultivating uh uh diversity on campus.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a benefit in terms of learning for students to be exposed to people of different backgrounds, different you know, different experiences, that kind of thing.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: So DEI offices, although they weren't called that um at the time, uh, grew from basically in time of the 60s and 70s up until the summer of 2020.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then you have the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, and then there was just an unbelievable spike uh in demand for DEI programs, and they are starting to be called that at this point.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so in universities and outside.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So there's such a such a uh hiring push actually at that time that it was um they were just trying to fill seats.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, there were um firms, business firms, universities who just, you know, we want DEI administrators, we want diversity uh consultants.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so there's a massive, uh, massive push uh inside of universities and outside uh to bring in people who have expertise uh and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Another uh pivot point uh is 2023.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's a Supreme Court ruling that race conscious admissions, uh, those policies are unconstitutional.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that was another flash point.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then after the October 7th massacre in Israel and the response on campus, there has been quite a bit of pressure on DEI offices and committees to change how they're doing things.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: So there was kind of like a growing swell and then like a crest around the summer of 2020.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now there has been uh kind of a risk, if we're thinking about it as like a wave on uh you know on a beach, it is now starting to recede.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so a number of uh businesses have been liquidating their DEI offices and committees.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: There has been a uh massive slow uh in in hiring.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that that is all taking place uh pretty much at this time.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so there's a significant history uh behind this and didn't just did not crop up uh overnight, did it?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: No, it definitely did not.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe I should add one little wrinkle to this.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this I feel a little bit stepping outside of uh the kind of the mainstream narrative about where DEI came from.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I think in the kind of standard genealogy or history of DEI, they leave they leave out a kind of critical element that I think that is prominent in DEI, uh uh DEI uh offices and committees.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the idea that we shouldn't really be taking um society kind of at face value, but we need to be kind of suspicious of traditional ways of doing things and traditional ways of thinking.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um the one of my favorite philosophers, uh Paul Recurr calls this kind of spirit of this the spirit as uh being the hermeneutics of suspicion.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so he traces the roots of this to, you know, renowned thinkers like Freud and Marx and Nietzsche.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so Nietzsche says, you know, you look at the surface of things, but that's not really the truth of it.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: You have to kind of get underneath, and what you see underneath is power relations.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Marx says it's you see what's underneath the surface of things is class conflict, that's the economy, and Freud says it's sexuality.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that there is a tendency amongst uh DEI advocates to have a kind of to want to bring a kind of critical lens uh to society.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's I think that that's what a lot of people are kind of gesturing towards.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um critics, I should say, of DEI.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what they're gesturing towards when they talk about critical race theory, that kind of thing.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think that they're trying to pinpoint this kind of critical lens that oftentimes DEI wants to bring to society.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just trying to be descriptive at this point.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to be, you know, say this is good or bad or not.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about that if you want.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that that's I think that's often left out when people talk about technology.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: No, come on, no, but it's important to have uh history, and it's also important to have uh what are the positive um uh influences that that led to uh to DEI?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's that's helpful.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: But let's turn it now pragmatically uh away from uh history and and theory and say what difference does this make, let's say, for admission to a university or to somebody receiving a job, uh, or the ways that people relate to each other at the university?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, again, another really good question.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so as I said a minute ago, after the Bakki case, universities were not allowed to use quotas.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: So they will often use diversity targets conceived as a kind of educational good.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I should hasten to add, and I think this is sometimes overlooked, that this is really more of an issue at top-tier schools than at second or third-tier schools, especially at least in the United States context.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, schools keep this kind of thing pretty close to the vest, you know, how DEI, um, affirmative action, these kinds of things influence um how they who they admit and who they hire.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but a lot of you know, second and third-tier schools, they're just struggling to keep the lights on, especially third-tier schools.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so they oftentimes have to accept practically anybody who applies.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the idea that they're really doing discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, or anything like that is probably not it probably doesn't have a substantial effect.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh so it's been much more of an influence on elite education.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why you get uh the case like that was uh before the Supreme Court that was you know centered around Harvard uh primarily.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So uh DEI definitely has an effect on who is hired, however.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So in admissions, I think that's more of an elite school kind of thing.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they will frame it as being, you know, we want diversity on campus.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of the thing, because it's good for our students to be exposed to people from different walks of life.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um but in terms of hiring, absolutely it has had an had an effect.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh over the past couple years, uh so-called diversity statements have uh become a way of um evaluating candidates.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let's put it that way.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh critics will say it's a way of weeding out undesirable candidates.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I believe in California, I think this is true, uh, that they have DEI functionaries actually sift applications before they even get to the faculty search committees.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I've heard uh that this prevents some applications from ever being read by the faculty uh uh search committees.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: This practice has come under uh scrutiny very recently, and by very recently, I mean in the last couple of months.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for example, Randall Kennedy at um Harvard University, a prominent law schlaw scholar, has recently written that uh diversity statements are in fact just ideological litmus tests, um they should have no place in faculty hiring.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um very forceful statement from uh from Randall Kennedy.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And Randall Kennedy is a leftist.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: He is not, you know, somebody he is not a con, you know, he's not a conservative.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's not this kind, he just says, you know, look, this is not the way that we should be sifting candidates at all.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in fact, he says, well, you know, we're a university.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: We should be, we should be uh not only uh welcoming but wanting to attract people who have a wide variety of views about all sorts of things.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea that we should be, you know, sifting based on kind of ideological litmus tests is the way that he's thinking about this, he says, is just does not fit well uh with universities.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and in the past just two weeks, I'm gonna say um MIT has ended their use of diversity statements.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I heard that.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so again, I think that this kind of maybe metaphor of like uh a wave cresting and falling on the shore and then uh or experiencing a kind of drawback.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um as for how the EI influences how people relate to one another, that's really where rubber hit the rubber hits the road, I think, um, for most of us in the uh in the academy.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that's really the target of my article.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for those uh who are uh listening to this podcast, uh we we do have uh um a link uh attached to this podcast where um Dr.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: Casey's uh article is uh uh it can can be accessed.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I encourage you to to uh uh look at that.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Speaking about your article, uh you said in your recent article that uh DEI is in trouble.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um who's saying that?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh how widespread uh is that viewpoint?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I opened the article by citing a number of pieces from major outlets.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: So Forbes, Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, uh who have reported on the notable drawdown in DAI positions.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I mentioned this a moment ago, but there's been a massive slow in hiring DEI positions in the business world, and many businesses and universities have been liquidating or substantially restructuring their DEI offices.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's definitely happening.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh this is not just, you know, um uh some people think, you know, uh wishing or being fearful.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it is certainly happening um around the country.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: In the business world, I my guess is that there are two factors.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh DEI initiatives cost a substantial, um they cost a substantial investment in time, money, and personnel.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and on the other hand, they the research shows that a lot of DEI work is neutral at best and harmful at worst.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't make a lot of sense for your for uh businesses who are driven by the dollar to be investing in something that doesn't help and might actually hurt their firm.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: In universities, a lot of the drawdown in DEI initiatives has come from political pressure.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So red states have over the past year or so passed legislation combating DEI in various forms.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh last summer there was a lot of reporting that this legislation wouldn't amount to very much.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was interesting going back and reading a year, a year hence, you know, all of these predictions.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is just going to be a flash in the pan.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is just, you know, a Republican, you know, a Republican move uh and it won't last.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then after the October 7th uh um attacks in Israel, and then and then importantly, the catastrophically bad optics of elite university presidents and congressional hearings, it's accelerated notably.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't slowed, it's it's been speeding up.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's a concern in the DEI community uh that if Trump wins the election in 2024, his administration might go after DEI through the Department of Education.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So throughout around the country, um both in red states and in blue states, there's been a lot of restructuring.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's debate, debates happening inside of uh universities all across the country of do they want to liquidate their, you know, do they want to get ahead of this and liquidate their offices?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do they want to restructure or rename their offices?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's what a lot of people have been doing, is they say, well, now that DEI has become toxic, we just we want to we'll call it something else.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there's been a lot of rebranding happening.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I personally don't think that the rebranding is really going to cut it in terms of the political pressure.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um so uh a number of universities have been suggesting that maybe what we should be doing is not ending our DEI practices, but we should maybe be segmenting them up and assigning them to other offices inside of the institution and then maybe closing the official DEI office or the official DEI committee, but then still having the work going on in other places.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, but yeah, so on the political front, I don't think the rebranding is probably gonna work.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I as I've said, I think the ostensible goals of DEI initiatives are laudable.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I worry somewhat about how they go about achieving their goals.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I don't I one of the reasons why I don't think that this is a flash in the pan is I don't think that uh uh a lot of DEI advocates understand the, I don't know how I don't know how else to put this, but the but to say that the moral revulsion that I think that a lot of people of critics of DEI experience at some of their practices.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't think that they grasp how intense that like moral loathing is.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I don't think this is gonna go anywhere.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I and I think that there has to be some type of reframing or restructuring or reformation of the way that we do these kinds of practices.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that advocates of DEI um need to understand the kind of moral objections that uh that uh objectors have.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that they need to recognize that they may, you know, may not always be on the side of the angels.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: There should be a kind of back and forth rather than two kind of two silos, because I think that we we get better practices when we talk to people who who disagree with the things that we're doing.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, speaking of other uh critics of DEI, some have uh considered DEI to be indoctrination.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, have you come across that in in some of your um uh study on DEI?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh certainly.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's uh that's often a word that is uh that is used uh both by conservative activists, but also by academics.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: They will sometimes use this term.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not always um, I I don't want to think of this as just like a right or a left issue.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like again, Randall Kennedy is critical of diversity statements, but he's an avowed leftist.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um many Marxist scholars are hyper-critical of uh framing things and constantly framing things in racial terms.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's something you see from Adolf Reed, for example, who's a uh a Marxist scholar at University of Pennsylvania.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So there are a number of people who will think of this as indoctrination.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I I personally have tended to shy away from using the word indoctrination.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'm trying to be too subtle or something like that, but I I think that it's actually okay.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: My well, I'll just say what I think.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: So my position on this is that it's okay to uh encourage students or to teach students to see the world in a particular way, uh, as long as it's not prescribed as being like this is 100% the right way to view things.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not viewing things this way, then you know you're being somehow a moral reprobate of some kind.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I also tend to think that when you teach students to think about the world, especially the social world in a certain way, that that view should be set alongside others.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is absolutely crucial in my understanding of university education, is that you should be encouraging students to see the world in a multi through a multiplicity of lenses.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: We should also be willing to critique the lenses.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we say, here's a way of, you know, for example, I I teach Nietzsche.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Nietzsche is uh opposed to basically everything I think as a philosopher and as a Christian, and I mean he is the arch critic of everything that I do, and that's part of why I teach him, is because, yeah, I want the students to be exposed to somebody who disagrees with everything that I think uh and that I'm most passionate about.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he's a brilliant critic.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so I want students to be able to view the world as Nietzsche does.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then we can we can step outside of that frame and then ask ourselves, you know, um, or even while we're in that frame, we can ask ourselves, you know, what what does this perspective illuminate, but also what does it hide from us?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe, you know, what does it help us see clearly?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: What does it obfuscate?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I in my piece, what I try to do is juxtapose train what I call training uh to education.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so I suggest that training uh uh aims at compliance, while education aims at producing a way of life where the person joyfully engages in inquiry.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm wanting universities to focus more on education rather than on conformity with a particular viewpoint.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I know some of my critics will say things like, well, um, that's what you're describing.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: This kind of training isn't really happening on university campuses.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um two responses to that.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: One is I'm confident that it is, um, because I've I have enough uh done enough research, listened to enough people to know that it is happening on university campuses.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: But secondly, insofar as it's not happening on university campuses and DEI offices or committees are doing education, then bravo.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let's I mean, um, so I don't have to, you know, if they're if they're doing things in what I'm considering to be the right way, then obviously I'm not going to be critiquing that.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, that's a good start.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: How about uh the ways that DEI differs from uh merit?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, some think that uh merit is uh um you know going out the window when uh uh we're uh looking at diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um and do you feel that that's a fair criticism?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's an important criticism.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I know less about it.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard the criticism certainly from intelligent people.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um I suppose my answer would depend in part on how broadly we want to define DEI.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so diversity statements for faculty jobs are definitely a thing, uh, and that seems associated with DEI, at least in some cases.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in the social sciences, there's been a push for uh reflexivity or positionality statements.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and this is a practice that I co-authored a piece uh critiquing about a year ago.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm skeptical of practices, for example, that pierce blind review to give identity information.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Insofar as that happens, I think that that's deleterious to the scientific enterprise.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if blind review if blind review is a good thing, then I don't think that we should be piercing blind review.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not sure if that's exactly DEI, but it's DEI adjacent, certainly.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I should say I'm I'm not necessarily against um all affirmative action policies.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: At least I wouldn't uh dis dismiss them out of hand.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would prefer that people simply be upfront about what they're trying to do and why, and then we can have a discussion about it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, um, I believe that the military used something like affirmative action techniques and develop and elevating minorities to positions of authority because they thought that there was a value in having uh officer diversity.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: But the way that they did this is they would hand select young soldiers who are minorities and then groom them to become officers.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there's a kind of affirmative action, something like that going on as something like a diversity, equity, and inclusion going on.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't the way it was done, it was not at odds with merit, since the whole idea is to take these young candidates and to get them up to speed.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: The military isn't fooling around, right?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: They don't they don't want unqualified people.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they don't want unqualified people leaving because that that would lead to the death of their soldiers.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not wanting to do that.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody wanted to make the argument that given the goals of the university, we should practice affirmative action or DEI in various ways like that, I would be opening to hear it, um, open to hear it.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I so I think it's uh almost certainly the case that there are that there are undeveloped people of all races and ethnicities who grow up without access to resources to properly cultivate their talents.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if universities want to devote resources to identifying and cultivating such people, uh the economist Roland Fryer wrote about this recently in the New York Times.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would certainly be open to that.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I would want it to be done in the way that we develop their talents and not just to put people in positions that they're unqualified for because of their diversity characteristics of their identity characteristics, I should say.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um so in that way, affirmative action or DEI or whatever you want to call it is not necessarily incompatible with merit-based decisions.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this way of seeing things um is basically framing it as a as a pipeline issue, a pipeline problem.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So addressing pipeline issues uh involves much more time and investment.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh frankly, I worry a little bit that the that at least the universities uh are really wanting to do that.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I kind of get the sense that they want to take a cheap solution.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that's oftentimes what DEI offices and and committees end up doing is being kind of like a cheap, light version that doesn't actually affect the kinds of social change that they're wanting to affect.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that universities, I agree with Roland Fryer, if they really want to uh uh increase the diversity in faculty, for example, uh and students at elite institutions, that they really should put their money where their mouth is and start investing in education, both inside of their institutions, but also in the broader community.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Roland Fryer points out that people, you know, places like Harvard are just, they're essentially hedge hedge funds with a university attached, as people like to say.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they could, I think the, I think the way that he puts this is they wouldn't even have to tap into their endowments.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: They could just use the interest on their endowments, I think this is the way he puts this, to fund massive magnet schools like in the Boston area.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and they could do that if they wanted to, but they don't do things like that.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and to me, that makes me worry, let's say a little bit about the hypocrisy of institutions, that I think what they should be doing is they should be trying to identify talent wherever it comes from, uh, and to and to develop it.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that would actually be a very, very productive way of doing diversity, equity, and inclusion that is not at odds with uh with merit-based thinking.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: So at the end of your article, uh uh, Patrick, you uh wrote about uh reforming DEI rather than abandoning it uh in uh entirely, as uh some critics uh would do.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh can you state why you think that there's uh some future in a reformed uh DEI approach?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a good question.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so my position on this is that um universities are precisely the places for thinking through ideas and discussing them, even if we disagree with them.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I know a lot of people, some of the criticism I've had of my piece is that DEI shouldn't be reformed, it should just be eliminated.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: It should just because it's evil and it should just be done away with.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I disagree with that tactic for a couple of reasons.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, firstly, because again, I've been around people who in DEI spaces and I think that they genuinely want to help people and make them feel included and make them feel welcome at universities and productive.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to, you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I would want to redirect that kind of altruistic energy in more productive directions.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I have my views on these things, but I'm just one person.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: I would want to hear, you know, what other people have to say about that.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but I especially universities, I definitely do not want um people telling universities what they can and cannot teach.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um universities are the place for discussing all sorts of ideas, even if I think that they're bad.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I wouldn't want to ban them.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh again, I teach people that I disagree with.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: I disagree with Marx, I teach Marx, I disagree with Nietzsche, I teach Nietzsche.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's um something that universities should be doing.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I, for one, take a lot of pleasure in seeing the world as others as others do, even if I disagree with their way of seeing.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh C.S.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis talks about this uh in a book called Uh An Experiment in Criticism, about just getting inside of the minds of other people and how much enjoyment there can be found in doing that and seeing the world from another person's perspective.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even again, somebody like Marx with whom I disagree, I just I take a tremendous amount of enjoyment in seeing the world as he does.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: But uh additionally, uh if we can't discuss ideas, I don't know how we uh how we can critique bad ideas.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think that banning ideas, I think, would be the wrong way of doing it.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh bad ideas are out there in the culture, you know, both in DEI space and in other spaces.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's bad philosophy.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: And as C.S.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis says, that if you know good philosophy must exist if for no other reason that bad philosophy exists and must be addressed.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think that's right.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I would rather, instead of trying to ban DEI, uh, I would rather it be reformed.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: I would rather universities be leading on questions about identity.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think unfortunately, what's been happening is that um universities have just been kind of following uh the cultural zeitgeist about these kinds of things.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think that that's really, really unfortunate.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think the right way of doing things is to say is for universities to invest in faculty who are concerned with these kinds of things, who study these kinds of things in the right kinds of ways, who are willing to engage with their critics, that kind of thing.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so it should get us up to a place where universities are in fact in the forefront of discussing uh issues related to identity.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Patrick, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions and give us perspective on uh DEI.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: My guess is that this uh we're gonna be talking about this quite a bit uh in society in the in the coming years, too, and uh appreciate your input today.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you having me.